[Hiberno-Britannic Politics] My Better Brexit Deal Goes To Another School

Elldren

daveNYC wrote: »

Antinumeric wrote: »

Our country has absolutely no way of handling electoral advertising fraud, policy is already made by the time it is all exposed.

Is there even a good way of dealing with this?

Throwing people in jail and fining them into bankruptcy would be at least a start, but there aren't a whole lot of good answers to discovering election fraud after the election. From what I've seen of the other election violations in the UK the worst that DUP will get is a 10k fine and a letter asking them to please not do it again.

The only possible upside to the Labour split is that it might mean more yelling against Brexit as the various media outlets do interviews with the MPs that are leaving. I'm pretty much grasping at straws there.

honestly they should be fined for at least the value of the fraud committed

I mean, if you can say they received £x in fraudulent donations, the fine should start at £x

Bogart

Corbyn supporters have been screaming at MPs and members who don't swear fealty to Corbyn to get out of the party for three years. Now that a handful of MPs are actually doing it they're screaming about betrayal and how it'll hand the next election to the Tories. Pick a lane, guys.

Labour splitting is a natural consequence of Labour's leadership ignoring anti-semitism and supporting Brexit. If Labour don't want to split the vote and hand the Tories these five/six constituencies they can choose not to contest them. They'll vote with Labour on about 90% of issues anyway. Or, you know, maybe it would have been a good idea to not brush anti-semitism under the carpet and maybe not resolutely oppose a second referendum?

The upside to them splitting is it hopefully puts pressure on Corbyn and provides a reasonable place for MPs unhappy with either of the main parties somewhere to flee to when the hard extremes have taken over. You could argue that they could always join the Lib Dems, but a new party without the damaged reputation of the Lib Dems probably looks more attractive.

Rhesus Positive

Elldren wrote: »

daveNYC wrote: »

Antinumeric wrote: »

Our country has absolutely no way of handling electoral advertising fraud, policy is already made by the time it is all exposed.

Is there even a good way of dealing with this?

Throwing people in jail and fining them into bankruptcy would be at least a start, but there aren't a whole lot of good answers to discovering election fraud after the election. From what I've seen of the other election violations in the UK the worst that DUP will get is a 10k fine and a letter asking them to please not do it again.

The only possible upside to the Labour split is that it might mean more yelling against Brexit as the various media outlets do interviews with the MPs that are leaving. I'm pretty much grasping at straws there.

honestly they should be fined for at least the value of the fraud committed

I mean, if you can say they received £x in fraudulent donations, the fine should start at £x

Treat it like repaying underpaid taxes

Start at the lost revenue, then multiply by a percentage depending on the behaviour of the donor recipient

Bogart

The last time a bunch of Labour MPs left it was over Europe (Labour decided it wanted to leave the EEC) and unilateral nuclear disarmament. You veer far enough one way and the members at the other end jump off. What's aggravating is how easy it would have been for Corbyn to avoid this. They can only split and claim to be offering an alternative because Corbyn has left space for a new party to appeal to disaffected Remain voters. The anti-semitism angle helps as well and would have been trivially easy to do better on.

Aldo

As a kind of Brexit101 Last Week Tonight: It is quite concise and explains a lot of the shit discussed in
this thread for a foreign/layman-audience. https://youtu.be/HaBQfSAVt0s

I think this link won't work in the UK, as it contains clips of Parliament and those aren't allowed in comedy shows accroding to some utterly stupid British law. See, you don't need the EU to write stupid laws.

klemming

Isn't 'disaffected Remain voters' a tautology?
A capable party that's appealing to 48% of the country while the other two fight over the 52% would be nice to see.

Bogart

https://twitter.com/RaynerSkyNews/status/1097437706592968704

It's not the catchiest name (Sky News reporter).

Jam Warrior

It's a pretty cynical viewpoint, but the smoking rubble of a no deal Brexit is probably one of the best chances for the kind of political shakeup that requires disrupting the Lab/Con 2 party system and letting in a new player. Still a massive entrenched norms mountain to climb though.

Bogart

I'd say right now there wasn't much chance of a new centrist party winning many seats. After Brexit, I have no clue how many they might or might not pick up in the wreckage.

Bad-Beat

The seven MPs who have just resigned from the Labour Party:

https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1097438733610176512

(Sebastian Payne works for the Financial Times and was not in The Inbetweeners.)

Chika Umunna; Mike Gapes; Luciana Berger; Ann Coffey; Chris Leslie, Gavin Shuker; Angela Smith.

Bogart

The brave heroes/disgraceful traitors are:

Chuka Umunna
Mike Gapes
Luciana Berger
Ann Coffey
Chris Leslie
Gavin Shuker
Angela Smith

EDIT: beat'd.

Solar

Fucking hell

dylman

I thought they'd just resign the whip and see what happens rather than actually quit. I wonder if anyone else will follow them?

Bogart

The current majorities:

Chuka Umunna: 26,285 (47.1%)
Mike Gapes: 31,647 (54.9%)
Luciana Berger: 29,466 (67.6%)
Ann Coffey: 14,477 (34.9%)
Chris Leslie: 19,590 (49.9%)
Gavin Shuker: 13,925 (30.1%)
Angela Smith: 1,322 (2.6%)

All but Smith are in very safe Labour seats, so Labour might well fancy their chances of beating all of them with their own MP.

Elldren

dylman wrote: »

I thought they'd just resign the whip and see what happens rather than actually quit. I wonder if anyone else will follow them?

Resigning the whip is quitting the party

Bad-Beat

All eyes on what disillusioned Tory MPs like Anna Soubry do now, I guess.

Securing a rainbow coalition within this Independent Group could be argued as both a positive and negative so I'd wager any such plans would need to be handled very carefully.

daveNYC

Jam Warrior wrote: »

It's a pretty cynical viewpoint, but the smoking rubble of a no deal Brexit is probably one of the best chances for the kind of political shakeup that requires disrupting the Lab/Con 2 party system and letting in a new player. Still a massive entrenched norms mountain to climb though.

FPTP really lends itself to a two party system. It's more likely that either these guys or Labour will go down in flames than a stable three party system will come about.

Most I'm hoping for is that their announcement includes a Judean People's Front joke.

Casual

Kind of a shame about Chuka since he was a genuine hope for the future of Labour once this bout of stupidity has passed us by.

Try as I might I can't really put a silver lining on this. It probably will help the Tories win the next election and it will probably do exactly the same as the SDP did before it. Labour has lost some of its few remaining moderate voices.

If they had managed to take ten or so Tories with them this would be another matter but as it is this is now just more left wing infighting while the right rubs its hands with glee and carries on unopposed.

Bogart

The SDP won very few seats but took a quarter of the vote, almost beating Labour's share. After this the SDP were locked into a slow nosedive but Labour took a look at itself and actually changed. Militant were expelled and Kinnock dragged the party closer to the centre. And it also remained out of power for another fifteen years.

Maybe this is Labour's cycle. The hard left take over, it splits, it drags itself back to the centre slowly, wins power, gets kicked out, the hard left etc

Bad-Beat

Corbyn's response:

I am disappointed that these MPs have felt unable to continue to work together for the Labour policies that inspired millions at the last election and saw us increase our vote by the largest share since 1945.

Labour won people over on a programme for the many not the few – redistributing wealth and power, taking vital resources into public ownership, investing in every region and nation, and tackling climate change.

The Conservative Government is bungling Brexit, while Labour has set out a unifying and credible alternative plan. When millions are facing the misery of Universal Credit, rising crime, homelessness and poverty, now more than ever is the time to bring people together to build a better future for us all.

Where can one find this "unifying and credible alternative plan" then Jeremy?

Casual

And the rest of us get to wait in the gutter through 30 years of unopposed tory rule while Labour gets its shit together.

Bogart

Guardian reporter. Would love to know who was saying this.

https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/1097445702056243200

It's worth bearing in mind the individual reasons for setting up this group for these seven MPs vary. Umunna's constituency recently made changes that would allow them to deselect him more easily, Berger's CLP tried to get a vote of no confidence in her passed on the word of a whacko and the leadership response was to demand a public pledge of loyalty and maybe all this anti-semitism would go away, etc. At least a few of these MPs have jumped before they were pushed, and that's the fault of the leadership. If they felt their time was up, why wouldn't they leave?

If Nick Boles and other Tory centrists feel similarly threatened (and at least one has been told he's up for deselection) there's no reason they won't jump ship as well.

Mc zany

Bad-Beat wrote: »

Corbyn's response:

I am disappointed that these MPs have felt unable to continue to work together for the Labour policies that inspired millions at the last election and saw us increase our vote by the largest share since 1945.

Labour won people over on a programme for the many not the few – redistributing wealth and power, taking vital resources into public ownership, investing in every region and nation, and tackling climate change.

The Conservative Government is bungling Brexit, while Labour has set out a unifying and credible alternative plan. When millions are facing the misery of Universal Credit, rising crime, homelessness and poverty, now more than ever is the time to bring people together to build a better future for us all.

Where can one find this "unifying and credible alternative plan" then Jeremy?

Their plan is telling everyone that they have a plan.

Bogart

https://twitter.com/YoungLabourUK/status/1097439224310231042

The official account of Labour's youth wing there. They're taking it well, and certainly reflecting on why this happened with thoughtful maturity.

Prohass

Bogart wrote: »

https://twitter.com/YoungLabourUK/status/1097439224310231042

The official account of Labour's youth wing there. They're taking it well, and certainly reflecting on why this happened with thoughtful maturity.

Jesus Christ where do they think they are? The jungles of Columbia?

How can this be the alternative to the Right?

H3Knuckles

Jeremy Corbyn wrote:

I am disappointed that these MPs have felt unable to continue to work together for the Labour policies that inspired millions at the last election and saw us increase our vote by the largest share since 1945.

That's a real interesting bit of spin and half-truth there Corbyn. Talk about how big and impressive the numbers are, instead of admitting that five of your predecessors were able to actually win general elections with smaller numbers during that time period.

Bogart

Quite a few Labour MPs are striking a sadder tone, but the faithful commissars will likely see this as both a glorious victory for party purity and a heinous betrayal. A demand to get out followed by disbelief that you could ever consider leaving.

PMQs this week should be fun.

Bad-Beat

They may as well have tweeted "your mum". Both would have shown the same level of maturity.

Couscous

saw us increase our vote by the largest share since 1945.

I am amazed this is not considered a freaking joke.

Bogart

I think it's probably not indicative of actual young Labour members, who likely aren't too happy with Corbyn's Brexit stance. But they don't have the Twitter password. In my head there's a 74 year old in a Che t-shirt tweeting this.

Solar

It's a catastrophic failure of leadership. I've batted hard for Corbyn in the past but this is a disaster

Dis'

Prohass wrote: »

Bogart wrote: »

https://twitter.com/YoungLabourUK/status/1097439224310231042

The official account of Labour's youth wing there. They're taking it well, and certainly reflecting on why this happened with thoughtful maturity.

Jesus Christ where do they think they are? The jungles of Columbia?

How can this be the alternative to the right?

I mean this is a line from Labour's anthem right? Its a old party slogan rather than new verbiage.

surrealitycheck

yeah its an old thing but its just like lads the optics of tweeting anything with the word "traitors" in it.... are Not Good....

Bad-Beat

Just went back and had a look at that "hostility list" that got leaked a few years back, detailing each Labour MP's loyalty to Corbyn and how each of these 7 faired...

Chuka Umunna (Hostile Group)
Mike Gapes (Neutral but not hostile)
Luciana Berger (Hostile Group)
Ann Coffey (Hostile Group)
Chris Leslie (Hostile Group)
Gavin Shuker (Neutral but not hostile)
Angela Smith (Core Group Negative)

Looks like whoever compiled that list was pretty much on the money.

Desktop Hippie

I’m not saying the Labour Party has become a cesspool of division and abuse, but this tweet from Guardian columnist and Labour pundit Owen Jones is from yesterday. He’d launched into full attack mode before anyone had even announced anything.

https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1097254339528278016

Prohass

I'm normally frustrated with Party splits and spills and all that shit, as they're usually just preening and pageantry. but labour under Corbyn has provided the one and only case where I completely understand. some things are just worth quitting over. What else can they even do when it's been made clear the leadership has no interest in being an actual opposition party, except in some abstract bonkers ideological horseshoe of bullshit which has the practical result of making them an auxiliary wing of the Tories

Red or Alive

Maybe this will cause Corbyn to reflect and reconsider his position on an EU referendum.

Any takers?

Thirith

My impression from the comments I've seen is that if anything it'll lead to many people in Labour doubling down on their current positions.

Red or Alive

Yeah, that's what I'd put my money down on, too.

Elldren

Desktop Hippie wrote: »

I’m not saying the Labour Party has become a cesspool of division and abuse, but this tweet from Guardian columnist and Labour pundit Owen Jones is from yesterday. He’d launched into full attack mode before anyone had even announced anything.

https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1097254339528278016

Do you mind terribly if I say that?